Aatmanirbhar Bharat’: MoD accords high priority to indigenisation of Software Defined Radios for the Armed Forces.

July 27, 2022

Ministry of Defence (MoD) has fast-tracked the indigenisation of Software Defined Radios (SDRs) with country’s premier R&D institutions Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur to fulfill the increasing demand by the Armed Forces across a broad spectrum of operations.
The complete product life cycle management framework is necessary for security sensitive SDR technology and products. It involves indigenous self-sustainable design, development, manufacturing, testing/certification and maintenance ecosystem.
Two key elements of indigenous SDR technology are the standardised operating software environment (OE) and applications (also known as waveforms) with associated waveforms repository and test/certification facility. Standard OE enables waveform portability and interoperability among SDRs of multiple vendors. Towards this, the Ministry of Defence has taken a decision to define and develop reference implementation of India specific operating environment called India Software Communication Architecture (SCA) profile or Indian Radio Software Architecture.
Director, IIT Kanpur Dr Abhay Karandikar, who is the Chairman of SCA Committee constituted by MoD, has pioneered the idea of having ‘India SCA Profile’.
A Draft Project Report (DPR) has been formulated by DEAL/DRDO towards indigenous development of SDR with a roadmap and timelines.
The three institutions involved in the development namely, DEAL/DRDO, IIT-Kanpur and DoS have already started the work as per DPR. Defence Secretary Dr Ajay Kumar exuded confidence on all organisations and said that it will create a new benchmark towards indigenisation of critical equipment which, so far, has been imported.
This would give a boost to the endeavour to achieve ‘Aatmanirbharta’, reduce import budget and create secured radio network for the Armed Forces.